


warmth

by whitesclera



Category: Holostars, Virtual Streamer Animated Characters
Genre: Bullying, Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28958106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesclera/pseuds/whitesclera
Summary: He was thirteen-years-old when he ran away from home.
Relationships: Yukoku Roberu & Kageyama Shien
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	warmth

Growing up, Kageyama Shien was called a monster.

“He probably has fleas.” 

“Why are they letting him in here? This isn’t a pet shop, it’s a school.”

“What a freak.”

“Allowing something like that in the proximity of children… do they not care for the risks? What if it has rabies?”

He wrapped a hand around the bend of his arm, head lowered and eyes pinned to his feet. They were words of children and adults alike, mocking but honest in their belief, and there was little he could do but listen to their hurtful words, no way to defend himself without giving them more reason to believe those lies.

It was emotionally scarring to have to see his classmates’ parents gently nudging their children away from him with distrusting glares, like what he had was infectious. Like what he had was sickness and not appendages connected to his skin and flesh. Like it didn’t hurt when they pulled on his tail and clumsily ripped fur, thinking it was all fake. Thinking that Shien only wanted to be special and different.

In the end, Shien was blamed for that incident. He had provoked them, they claimed, and they only acted in self-defense. No one believed it - Shien did everything he could to be _good_ even if they didn't - but it was the final straw for his human parents who couldn’t fully empathize, not with their rounded ears and blunted teeth, family only in sealed and stamped documentations paid with a hefty amount of money. With an understanding most believed he was incapable of, Shien knew they hadn’t pulled him out of public schooling because of what happened and how it left him traumatized but rather of how poorly it reflected on their name.

It was around that time that Shien resolved to leave home once he’s a little older. Someplace far, far away from where monsters that wore human faces called themselves his family lived. Someplace where people can unconditionally accept him for what he was without picking apart the skin under his fur just to prove that he was no less humane than the rest of them.

Until then, he can only endure. Hidden from public eye and sheltered like a disgrace, he was privately tutored and given everything an ordinary human child could have ever wanted in a lifetime. All his parents asked for in return was that he refrain from doing anything that will sully their name any further- which involved not leaving home.

With empty eyes, Shien agreed. Like always, there was little he could do but listen. The healing scars on the backs of his hands spoke of what would happen if he didn’t. 

Sheltered, well-fed, treated like a blemish on their family name, and carrying a potent fear of being touched by humans and trauma of being treated inhumanely, Shien continued to live.

* * *

He was thirteen-years-old when he ran away from home. 

Carrying nothing but two sets of clothes and simple-minded determination to find somewhere else that wasn’t _here_ , Shien left through the front gates and never looked back. As far as he knew, his parents hadn’t made any efforts to look for him either.

Ironically, despite the years he spent feeling nothing but cold indifference towards them, it still stung to know.

It wasn’t easy. Not that it ever had been, but it was even more so when people noticed the unusual bulge wrapped around his left leg as he walked the streets or the conspicuous hat that he wore to hide his ears. He went several days without eating in a week once people started recognizing him from rumors that spread in streets he previously inhabited. The soles of his shoes have started to wear out at one point, leaving the bare skin of his feet to peel against unforgiving concrete. 

Shien thought he would die. Several times, when the nights were ruthlessly cold or the sun scalded him until his vision was swimming and the skin between his toes was breaking. No one would take him in because it was one thing to take in an animal stray and another to take someone that was far too human to be mistaken for one. It was one such night when he was curled up tightly in a corner near a dimly lit window, his hands grabbing at his shoulders and keeping what little warmth he could get with his ragged clothes and fog hovering lightly over his every breath, that he thought it would be the end for him.

He thought he didn’t have any regrets. Shien has learned to accept that there wasn’t anything he could have done, no matter how hard he tried. He was only just a child, and he didn’t have anyone he could trust. The children shunned him, the adults mocked him, and Shien had done the best he could. Even if it didn’t turn out well, he never gave up, delusions of one day proving them wrong and showing them he was human like the rest of them only deepening his resolve.

But, true to most things, determination can only take him so far. 

Unfocused eyes drift upward as snow began to fall. Shien didn’t mind going like this. It hurt a little that there was no one around who will remember him and no one who will grieve him when he’s finally gone, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have enough time to come to terms with it. It was much better than dying in that house like a pet that wore the nametag of a son, at the very least.

Breathing out deeply, resignation weighing down his bones and chest, Shien slowly closed his eyes and went to sleep.

* * *

The first surprise was waking up. The second was the warmth.

The third- jolted him awake, primal fear making his lips pull back in a snarl as he clawed at the weight resting around his midsection with jagged, untrimmed nails. He heard a yelp of pain and a hiss as the blankets tangled with their legs, dragging them down and over the edge of-

_THUD._

-a _bed_?

Animosity partially seized by confusion, Shien hastily backed into a wall where he can get a clearer look at his surroundings and was dumbfounded to find he wasn’t in the same alley he last remembered being in before he succumbed to unconsciousness. It was a fairly spacious room, with little belongings in a style that reminded him of his former home. Polished floors, tall windows, minimal but expensive-looking lights, and a comfortable bed that sat with-

Shien stopped breathing as he recognized the figure slowly climbing up from the other side.

A _person_. There’s a person. That weight on his chest had been that _person’s_ arm. His shoulders rose in defensive fear, the rest of him shuddering from the remembered sensation of the searing body heat the limb left from where it touched him. An irrational urge burned up his fingertips to scratch at the place until his skin ripped under his fingernails. 

“That _hurt._ ” He flinched in surprise at the abrupt volume of the man’s voice, his ears flattening against his head in response. Eyes flicking around, he struggled to look for an exit and found a door right behind the man. _There._ “You even tore the skin, you brat-“

Without an ounce of hesitation, Shien took advantage of the man's surprise and bolted, hand outstretched for the knob with his heart in his throat. However, he soon realized that he misjudged both the distance and the speed of the man’s reflexes because just as he was mere centimeters away from the door, a large hand wrapped around his arm- surprisingly painless but firm. 

Shien shut his eyes and gritted his teeth from a long-ingrained habit of confronting punishment, tail tucked between his legs and body curling into itself. It had been a while since he has had any physical contact with a human; a part of him is afraid he has forgotten the pain; that his skin has gone soft and he no longer held the same tolerance for bruises as he used to.

Moments pass with him clambering to remain pressed against the door, waiting for the man’s anger to abate before daring to open his eyes. Attempting to run or struggle in this situation would only end up hurting him even more, he had learned. 

Except the pain never came. There was only silence- and an anguished noise that came from deep within the man’s chest like it had physically torn its way out his throat.

 _That_ startled Shien enough to look up.

The color of sunset in one eye, and amethyst in the other. It was a weird set of colors, one that he’s never seen in other humans before. His thoughts must have somehow shown on his face because the man jerked back like he’d been burned, one hand rising to hide his violet eye, body angling to the side from the movement and granting Shien a good view of the five bleeding lines running down his arm.

_I did that._

“Sorry. Did I startle you?” the man asked, his voice still a little loud but without the intent of violence. It had the quality of someone who just woke up, raspy still and unused to speaking. There was a newfound clarity not only to his voice but eyes. He must have realized something. 

Shien studied the man’s sheepish expression. 

“I, uh, found you outside my bar.”

Shien’s eyebrows furrowed. The… dim lights. He doesn’t recall much, but it was likely that the place he ended up staying near was a bar, still alive with activity even during nighttime. Those places generate heat, enough for him to get through most nights.

“You were freezing,” the man said. Suddenly, he hissed, once again noticing the sting of the cuts on his arm. Shien eyed it with guilt. “Thought it would help if I stayed with you.”

“I’m-“ he attempted to work his throat, so unused to speaking after relying on just his body language to communicate. Not that many people cared to listen to what he has to say. But this man- he was looking at him like he was waiting for a response. Shien will give him that much; it was the least he can do. “No… good. With, contact.”

The man’s expression doesn’t change. “Okay.” Then, after an almost comfortable beat of silence, “are you hungry?”

Shien frowned, distrust carved into every inch of his face. 

“Ah, that expression says you don’t trust me.” Rising to his full height, the man rubbed at the back of his head. It doesn’t escape Shien’s notice that he was being careful to keep his hands where he could easily see them. “That’s okay. What do you usually eat? I don’t have much in the fridge. I normally go out to buy food from the convenience store across the street whenever I’m hungry. Saves me the effort and energy.”

No response. The man surprisingly took it in stride. “We can’t exactly let you go with an empty stomach after what happened last night. You were out on freezing temperatures and even I can tell with just a glance that you haven’t been eating as much as you should.”

There was a question there, but one that the man doesn’t push. 

“I have cup noodles if you’re against me cooking anything? I can’t tamper with its contents, so it should be safe.”

Shien bit his tongue and thought his options over. He could decline, and he would leave this place without anything in his stomach. He wasn’t stupid- there were still ways for people to mess with the contents of something like that. If not the noodles themselves, it was either the water or utensils. The man had brought him here the night before and that was plenty of time for preparation even if he had just woken up.

But, Shien wavered, his stomach grumbling, caving with the promise of finally getting something in it for the first time in days. It was much better than looking into the dumpsters. If the man’s intention was to kill him, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been already dying before he was brought in to his place. Maybe someone might even start to care if he was found dead right here.

(Maybe his parents will see him on the news and-)

Reluctantly, still uncertain and distrusting of the man's intentions, Shien relented.

“…Okay.”

* * *

Yukoku Roberu. 

The man with the two-colored eyes told him that was his name, and said nothing else. He hadn’t told Shien to leave his house even after he finished eating and asked him to take a bath after Shien gave no indication that he didn't know how to. And even after the sun had set – a view that Shien could clearly see with the towering glass windows, familiar but never from this up high – he simply went about his day, cleaning the room and, to his confusion, talking to his computer. Shien didn’t ask, content to stay in the corner he claimed for himself- it granted him a good vantage point. Roberu must know that because he steered clear of the doors.

If he started asking questions about their arrangement, he would be obliged to answer some of Roberu’s own and that wasn’t something he wanted. 

Even if the _why_ ’s were eating away at him as the days continued to pass.

* * *

Eventually, Roberu had to leave for work.

There was very little fanfare about it. He made sure to point where to find food if Shien got hungry while he was away, less a way to tell him something he’d already known (and taken care to remember from the very first night) but more to reaffirm that Shien was _allowed_ to take if he wanted. He reminded him how to turn the heater on if he wanted a bath and where to get Roberu's old clothes to wear if he preferred. 

And then, without an explanation or even a single word, he handed Shien a duplicate of his keys and left.

Just like that.

His permission. A _choice_. 

Maybe even a place to return to. Warm, where he will never get hungry. Where someone knew him, not by name, because Shien hadn’t given it yet, but enough that he will be remembered.

 _Just like that,_ he thought, something bitter and angry and young tearing his chest apart.

Everything Shien could possibly ask for, given to him on a silver platter.

* * *

His hands were trembling as he pressed the kitchen knife near Roberu’s stomach when he returned home. The man hadn’t made a move to fight back upon realizing what was happening and simply kicked the door close behind him. An open invitation for Shien to do and say what he wanted.

“There’s… something,” Shien murmured. His words still halted with uncertain pauses; his vocabulary rusty with disuse. “You want something.”

Roberu held his stare fearlessly. Without the lights turned on and only the moon as their light source, his empty expression looked eerie. 

“What do you think I want?” Roberu asked.

“I don’t know.”

Unconcerned about the knife in his front, Roberu sighed. It sounded familiar to Shien’s ears. 

_Disappointment_.

It burned intimately. Stung with the same hurt as it had when he was seven and begging his parents for scraps of attention. 

“You know, it’s been a week since then.” He liked to talk, Shien thought distantly. In fact, he talked enough for them both. Filling in silences when he had nothing to say, smoothly moving from one topic to another despite Shien’s lack of participation in the one-sided conversations. An almost pleasant noise, one that didn’t make Shien feel like what he had to say didn’t matter but rather-

“That night,” Roberu started, his voice going scarily flat, “I found a malnourished child sitting by the backdoor of my bar. Did you know? You weren’t breathing and you were so cold I couldn’t stop trembling as I carried you. I was panicking. I was _out of my mind_ with worry and I was _lucky_ that a friend was there with me at the time who had known what to do. I don’t think you would’ve made it if he hadn’t been there. I owe him, and whether you like it or not, you owe him, too.”

Shien’s grip started to falter but Roberu didn’t allow him that respite. He tugged Shien’s hand and, with the same firmness from their first night, tightened it over the handle of the knife. He tried to pull away but it didn’t budge.

“I heard of the rumors. I work as a bartender, and people tend to talk when their tongues are loosened with some drinks. About you, in particular, they had a lot to say.” He was trembling. He didn’t notice until Roberu held his hand. He felt warm. “’ _A wolf in sheep’s clothing._ ’ They said not to get involved with you. That you’ve wandered the streets and brought nothing but bad luck to anyone who had the misfortune of interacting with you. You’d attack anyone who got too near.” The man lowered his eyes to his mouth where his fangs poked visibly. “You bit someone once.”

Shien struggled weakly. “I was attacked.”

“They didn’t know that.” Lifting his own scarred arm to make a point, Roberu added, “ _I_ didn’t know that.”

“Why…” he swallowed. “That time... why didn’t you hit me?” It would have been right. Shien would have deserved it.

Roberu’s expression twisted _._ Even Shien who was careful to observe people's changes in expressions couldn't describe the way it looked. “You were _scared_. You aren’t used to people touching you which is why you reacted the way you did. Why would I hit you?”

 _Because they did_. _They always did._

He's trying his best to understand but he doesn't.

Shien couldn't.

“What is it? Why are you being nice?” he asked, frustration carrying his voice a little louder and echoing through the floor. His words were disjointed but clear. "I don't know what you want. You're loud but you never yell at me. You listen to what I say. You fed me every day. I don't get it. What is it? What do you want?"

There wasn't anything Shien can give him. He was a burden- a liability. Roberu had no obligations toward him. He wouldn't gain _anything_ from treating him kindly. 

So why?

Why was he being so _gentle_? 

So softly that Shien could hardly hear himself, he whispered:

"You scare me."

There was a moment of deafening quiet.

A heartbeat. Two.

And then Roberu was gently letting go, the knife clattering uselessly to the ground. He laughed but it sounded oddly warped to their ears. Strained, like it hurt but the motions were too familiar that he couldn't help himself or stop it from leaving him.

"I wanted to help you," he said. "All this time, I was waiting for you to realize that."

Shien raised his head, his lips trembling. Roberu had never looked- sad. In the week he has spent living with him, he was always smiling and laughing. His eyes didn't scrunch up at the corners, they didn't shine wetly with the promise of unshed tears. They didn't. That wasn't the Roberu he had come to know.

"You never told me your name," Roberu murmured.

And that was it, Shien realized. It was as simple as that. Roberu trusted him with his home and his back. Roberu genuinely wanted to help him. He did everything he could to earn Shien's trust and all Shien had done was greet him with a knife poised against his stomach and fear. 

_'I'm sorry.'_ The words locked in his throat. He wanted to say them. He wanted to mean them.

But Shien couldn't.

_'I'm sorry.'_

Roberu turned away, hastily waving his hand as he took his phone from his pocket. Shien couldn't see his face from where he was standing.

_'Roberu-san, I'm sorry-'_

"Don't worry. I know a few people who can help you out, if you want," Roberu said. "You don't have to stay here with me anymore. I'm sure they'll take very good care of you." 

_Oh._ Shien thought.

Nothing else came to mind as Roberu removed his coat and wordlessly got ready for bed. He could only watch as he bent to take the knife from the floor to place it on the sink.

Nothing but silence filled with hurt, and the sound of unspoken apologies that died an early death on the back of his tongue.

Nothing but a faint feeling of regret, a vague sense of loss of something important. Something he never quite had to begin with.

There was nothing, Shien thought. Nothing at all.

(Not anymore.)

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry shien


End file.
